


and she loves and she consumes

by celebreultimaverba



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Lucretia is the Hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-06 16:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14060649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celebreultimaverba/pseuds/celebreultimaverba
Summary: Lucretia, on the two-sunned planet.They become the Hunger.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exceed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exceed/gifts).



> Written as a birthday gift for my lovely Ink! Sorry it's a little late, but there's a second part to come!

It… hadn’t started out this way.

It never did, did it?

There was always a _reason_ for things happening and it never started out so badly, honestly, he, she, they, it was _meant_ to be good and pure and perfect, of course it was but things just didn’t work _perfectly all the time, they never did and never would—_

Life, well, life— that was horrible. She’d always thought so, in some ways, she’d always seen people beaten and bloodied like it didn’t matter and never would. She wasn’t born on the streets, not technically, but with the way her parents raised her, the way they reacted when she’d shared about how she wanted to write, she was good at it, she loved it—

Well, it was clear that—put delicately—they wouldn’t be supportive. She kept herself off the streets, from then.

And it was horrible, yes, of course. She ghost-wrote biographies, interviewing the most famous people in the world to know their voices, transcribe them to the cramped little letters in her notebooks, then to print, with little reward of recognition and one-time payments that really just kept her aloft until the next nights of writing.

Lord Faromir Yrollo. An elf, highborn and stuck-up with a perpetual sneer on his upper lip and a judgmental once-over when he had seen her obvious lowbrow clothing, at such a contrast to his own ornate robes. He’d founded the city of Uromir and wanted a book about it, and she’d sat him down and talked to him until his breath had merged into her own and she was writing as him, flawless and smooth and lightly accented with the smoothness of the Northern Elvish dialect, and he’d been _angry_ and _lonely_ and _miserable_ and he’d hated it and she hated it, hated it—

Dame Gretchen Silverthorn. A halfling, pretty and jovial with hair so tightly braided it clung to her head, polite to the point of discomfort when she’d invited Lucretia into her gifted estate, accidentally tracking mud in the foyer and assuring her butler a bit awkwardly that, no, it was fine, he didn’t have to _do_ anything, she could clean it up, really… She’d slain a devil and was given an estate to look after in reward, and was writing a book, and she’d sat her down and talked to her until Lucretia understood, until the Common made _sense_ because it was stiflingly polite and highbrow and Gretch had really never been like that and really didn’t know how to run an estate and she was grateful but she was _lonely_ and _trapped_ and _miserable_ and she’d hated it and she hated it, hated it—

On the other side.

Juniper Killgore. A human man, though that changed sometimes, buck-toothed and dark in face and mood. He didn’t talk to Lucretia much even though they squatted together when she hadn’t had work in four months and he hadn’t had anything but needles in his arm for six, but he sung a lot and he sung about how he wished anything of his life, regret and sadness mixing in simple lyrics Lucretia couldn’t help but write down as he was trappedlonelymiserableangry—

Wsuid. Just that—she hadn’t got anything else. Lucretia didn’t know much about them, just that they were young when she’d met them and somehow even younger when they’d died, coughing up blood and poison because they hadn’t known that weed was poisonous they’d just been so _hungry_ and their tail had twitched long past the time their coughing then breathing then heartbeat had stopped. Everyone else had been hungry too and didn’t much notice. Lucretia had, though, because it was the second kid that winter and the two of them had shared a blanket, once, and it didn’t take a spell to know the last things on their mind as they’d convulsed there, death, Lucretia knew, was lonely and miserable and it didn’t matter how angry or valiant or stubborn or happy or sad someone was, they all just ended up mortal.

Mortal and miserable. Hero, villain, rich, poor, no matter what race, species, alignment, goals, loves, flaws, blessings— life. If life existed. If one was _alive_ , one was _**miserable.**_

Lucretia learned this well.

* * *

The IPRE. A light, they advertised, and they _were._

Oh, they were, for Lucretia and for the whole world, really, with their bright advertisements and glossy posters of a better future, their pleas for the best and brightest to come forward, apply, be something, finally, make something of yourselves, the future, the world. It was glorious.

She’d applied.

There were seven spots to fill, a few years to do it in. She was young, still, technically, though not the youngest.

She got in.

She got trained.

She made friends, too, knowing that even if they went and she didn’t, or she went and they didn’t, there’d be something to come back to.

Lup and Taako, inseparable, sharp as whips and biting about as deep when they wanted to. Lucretia was never really sure what made them adopt her as they did, because they weren’t much for socialization, but they _loved_ her, with Lup’s brazen affection and Taako’s bored investment.

Barry, quiet and clever, loving too fast and deep for the creepy magic he was so fond of. He’d explain it to her for hours through her confusion, and she’d sometimes stop listening and let him speak, still completely riveted by his passion and words—just, not their content.

Merle, strange and grinning, silly and goofy and perfect for the chill and laid-back image he liked to project. His way of being happy struck Lucretia dumb, his infrequent wisdom so eloquent that she was wordless by comparison. He taught her some abjuration, a shield that worked so prettily, pearl white sheen to everything behind.

Davenport, with his passion to rival Barry’s, so excited by the mission and the possibility of his new crew that he never stopped moving, talking, bonding with the entire IPRE even as the pool of applicants got smaller and smaller.

And Magnus, strong and dumb and lovely, a puppy in frat boy form. He’d really made friends with her first, because that’s how he did things—really, without Magnus, Lucretia wouldn’t have met the rest of them, because Magnus had bonded almost more than Davenport had. He was easily excited and dogs made him cry sometimes.

She loved them.

And for the first time, in the IPRE, she found people who _loved_ life, used it, couldn’t get enough of it.

The spots to fill dropped to six. Budget cuts, maybe.

* * *

They hadn’t needed a chronicler.

Of course not.

* * *

She’d watched the press conference from the VIP area, because they hadn’t forgotten about her, they were her friends and loved her, and just because she was no longer in the IPRE didn’t mean that stopped.

She listened to their answers with a smile on her face and tears on her cheeks that didn’t dry even when they went out to the dive bar, said their goodbyes. She looks at their faces, when they leave. Because she knows it, they love her. They’ve lived, now they’ve lost.

Anger.

Sadness.

Loneliness.

Misery.

_**Horrible.** _

* * *

She writes. One book, then two. Her own voice. Then three.

Four. This one sells so much she no longer has to remember what it’s like being hungry. She remembers anyway.

Five. They want a sequel. She stops sleeping at normal hours.

Six. The mission wasn’t meant to be so long. Something had to have happened.

Seven. The right number. Of books, of people—it’s this one. They’d really all said the same thing, told the same story. Everyone who read it heard, the words, the song, her voice, her meaning.

They agree.

 _Life,_ she says, to crowds, at book signings, conferences, events, _life is difficult. It’s hard. It’s horrible. No one is happy, not all the time. Love is useless when dissatisfaction is rampant. There’s nothing, there’s nothing, there’s nothing. I’m nothing. You’re nothing. We’re everything._

It’s not those exact words at first.

But they agree.

 _It’s impossible,_ she says, to crowds, on stages, on air, in newspapers and books, _to love. It’s impossible to love well enough to change. Unhappiness is rampant and loving has never changed it, never will. There is nothing. You know this, yes? You agree? You and I are nothing. We’re everything, though, we can grow larger than this. We can be larger than nothing. We are everything. We can be larger than even that. We’re bonded, you know. In dissatisfaction. We want more. We are so, so hungry for more._

In so little time, she’s saying the words.

And they agree.

 _Life,_ she says, to her congregation, pearl-white shields surrounding them, _life is horrible. And we can be more than it. We can protect ourselves from it. You and I are not enough. We are so much bigger than anything._

They agree. The shields expand. Ever-expanding. Transcendent, resplendent, _hungry,_ but not horrible, no, not horrible.

Just hungry.

* * *

She screams, and the Hunger screams,

and they _**devour.**_


	2. Chapter 2

She sees the ship in the distance and doesn’t realize what it is at first. Of course they don’t, they never saw it from the inside, never loved the people in it, they’re so, so much bigger than that ship now and that plane and that love, yeah, they’re bigger than that always have been always will be—

They devour, one plane then another, following the Light of Creation with no pausing, no stopping, because they’re _hungry_ and _miserable_ and somehow, one ship can be so slow and so fast.

Davenport was always a fantastic pilot and she watches with pride even as the mother of pearl columns of her devouring chase him to nothing, to yet another escape, maybe with the Light, maybe without. It doesn’t really matter but there is a chase, they do keep seeing each other, and Lucretia tries not to feel joy every time the little white speck that is the Starblaster escapes, again, even as the plane they’d just been making their home is justly consumed.

The consumption, Lucretia thinks, and will always think, is beautiful. Her shields protect the planes in it, keeping her and her like in their bonds, free from life as it had been. The feeling of nothing is iridescent and beautiful, a mutation of a cleric’s faith, his smile remembered every time they make one anew. Merle Highchurch, saving the universe as his pupil destroys it.

* * *

It’s some time—Lucretia has never counted days or years, not when there’s so many of them—before she’s summoned.

Summoning, is that the right word for it? It’s a pull, she can’t _ignore_ it, or maybe there’s someone behind it that she doesn’t want to ignore.

She makes their parley room lovingly, knowing who is calling her. It’s draped in vines and sunlit and iridescent the way that the rest of her, so beautiful, is.

Merle appears, as she knew he would, and she smiles.

He doesn’t.

Also, he’s shirtless.

* * *

They both have to take a second to recover, Lucretia because she’s surprised that Merle is so surprised, and Merle because, well—

“Pan fucking damn it, Lucretia, what the fuck are you doing here? I was— I was trying to summon the Hunger.”

“That’s what you call us?”

“Us?”

“Merle, do you have a shirt to put on? Do I have to see that?”

He kind of makes a motion like he isn’t holding anything—he isn’t—and Lucretia frowns. “Oh, right. Sorry. How did you summon me, Merle?”

“I didn’t. I summoned the Hunger.”

“Yes, I know. That’s really what you call us?”

“Again, us?”

“We’re talking in circles. How are you?”

“No. No, Luce, I don’t— _please_ tell me, why are you here? Are you— that big, the big white thing that’s eating all these planes. Is that you, Lucy?”

Lucretia can feel her face fall just slightly. “Yes, that’s… that’s me. I obviously know where you all are. It’s a cute little ship, now that I’m—“ she gestures around the place. Merle looks at it, then.

“Do you want to walk around, or sit and chat?” she asks, because, she’s missed him. She’s missed them all, really, but Merle had taught her how to make her shields. Now that she’s so intertwined with them, she can’t think of anything else, anyone more fitting to have from the Starblaster than Merle, right here and now.

Well.

Merle, yes, first, but everyone… she does want to see everyone.

Merle sighs, and sits in one of the chairs Lucretia provided. She grins, sits, and wishes she’d constructed some tea. She wonders if that would be possible. “How is everyone else?”

He tells her. Tells her it’s been years and years, that they’ve missed her, and she feels warm and safe here in a way that she doesn’t feel when it’s her and everyone else. Oh, how she missed it, how she missed just her and—at least parts of—her family.

It hurts when she has to kill him. Neither of them know how else to end it, though. It wasn’t as if they had come to a resolution.

* * *

The next time, it’s Merle again.

The next, Davenport. Lucretia isn’t the only one Merle has ever taught.

The next, Davenport.

The next, Barry.

The next, Magnus.

* * *

She almost cries when she feels Magnus’ pull because she’d missed him so much that she’d asked Barry for him next time. She’d promised to figure out how to construct a dog for him, like she’d figured out ship decking for Davenport and what the hell an Erlenmeyer flask was for Barry.

She doesn’t actually know how to construct a dog. She hasn’t had enough experience with dogs and although there’s many, many dogs inside them—people bond incessantly with pets—she does’t know how to… get one.

But it doesn’t seem to matter because she answers the summons, brings Magnus into the space he created, and he expects her, smiling at her like she hasn’t known in—fuck, Barry said it had been over thirty years. She’s been without him for so long, and she missed him so much, and when he smiles like that and calls her _Creesh_ again, _I missed you, Creesh,_ he says, she breaks down, like she hasn’t done in so long, like she hasn’t been able to when she was all of them, miserable and lonely and hungry.

She’s been so hungry.

She wishes she could hug him.

“I’ve missed you too, Maggie, all of you,” she tells him, and they all know this. They still think of her as family, she knows as much. She still thinks of them as family, too, which is why she chases them so intently. Their bonds haven’t been cut but she’s so fucking _hungry_ for them, again, that even as they run and run and run, she chases and chases and chases. She _has_ to. She’s explained that to Merle, Davenport, Barry, and she’d explain it to Magnus except he’s not stopping to talk strategy and _whys_ with her like the other three had.

He looks like he wants to hug her. Rules of parley keep them from that much-needed contact. She shakes. They both do. It’s been so long.

“I’ve missed you too,” she finally says, and she can feel the vibrato of Magnus’ laugh even without touch, overly joyous. Can anything that Magnus does be less than that? She’s not sure.

“We’ve been through so many worlds, Creesh,” he says, and she stiffens, coming to expect the pleas by now. She doesn’t know how to say _**we can’t stop we’re too hungry.**_

But he doesn’t plea. Instead, he continues. “I wish you could have been there. The first place we touched on? World, full of animals, only animals— the twins, they made friends with mongooses. They learned their language— oh, Creesh, we would have loved you there so badly, you were always so good with languages…”

He talks like that for hours, recalling every funny story he can, every time they thought of her and missed her, he talks of all the dumb mistakes they’ve made and holds his own hands tighter when he speaks of how they’d died sometimes. The pain, the loss— and the love, too.

He doesn’t move from right in front of her, and she doesn’t want him to, despite having made the room special for him. Well, it’s more like a clearing— they’re on a sunlit porch, wooden and handmade, with sturdy wicker rocking chairs and overlooking grass that the dog would be running on if Lucretia knew fuckall about dogs and how to construct them.

She stops crying after only a few minutes, in love with his words.

He stresses that he’d be able to remember more if they’d had someone to write it down. He stresses that they miss her every day.

She laughs at all of it.

Not because it’s stupid, or silly—she loves it, knows she’ll love whatever other stupid or silly stories that they’ll come up with next time they see her. No, she laughs because she’s so tired of being away, because the pain of being without them but all of herself, all of them is so _great,_ because somehow in all this she can still hear in Merle and Davenport and Barry and Magnus that, oh, they still _love_ her and they still love _life._

She doesn’t know what to do with that.

Apparently it’s possible for a multiplanar, universe-devouring hunger to get a headache. Lucretia learns new things every day.

Eventually, Magnus runs out of words. Lucretia doesn’t have any in reply.

It’s a bit difficult to explain the drama of tens of trillions of people all bonded together in ravenous hunger, in the wake of so many dumb stories of just a few who love each other so profoundly. Lucretia wishes she could call their stories trivial, but.

She encompasses so many stories, and

the sum total of the love in the stories of her family

is infinitely more than the stories lost in the sheen of the whiteness of her shields.

The knowledge weighs her down and breaks itself into stanzas, written like poetry in the recesses of the heart she has left. She’s only got a seventh of it, split trillions and trillions and trillions of ways, so many sharp teeth slavering at the only part of her that she can still call her own. Her family owns the rest of it, and she doesn’t want that to change.

She kills Magnus.

* * *

Apologizes the next time, then kills him again.

And again.

And again.

* * *

Lup and then Taako spend a little while with her. Lup’s visit goes better than Taako’s does. Taako, as they’d all said, still loves her.

He has a… hurtful way of showing it.

“Listen, _babe,”_ he spits, stalking past the beautiful kitchen she’d prepared for him. By now, everyone has their own part of the space, and she’s gotten good at constructing it. It feels like a home. She’s even planned bedrooms, a basement, bathrooms, though they’ll never use those parts of the house. But there’s not much else to do, beyond trying to slake a hunger Lucretia isn’t sure how to feed anymore. “I don’t know what the hell you’ve been feeding the rest of these chucklefucks. I don’t wanna _see_ you. I haven’t wanted to see you since you destroyed our own fuckin’ plane of existence. I dunno what you’re trying to do here, but we’re trying to _destroy_ you, make no fucking mistake.”

Lucretia is breathless with love.

Taako is not. He has tried to touch, a hand clasped around her wrist as tightly as his grip on her heart and she remembers pain, though in her current state she can’t feel it—that’s the fault of the parley, his fingers never quite touching, or maybe it’s the fault of her current state being more… more Hunger than human, she supposes.

“Taako,” she finally grits out, and he lets go of her wrist, stalking around the kitchen like a trapped panther.

“No. No, you, shut up. Shut up, and start talking, because this is fucking—this is fucking _wild._ We leave you alone for— fucking— how long was it until you swallowed the first plane, huh? We were on—I think we were on the Plane of Thought for only two or three fucking months before you fucking _vored_ it and we had to go and fucking— we lost you, Lucretia, and we lost fucking everyone else, you know, and _I_ don’t care about that because all the assholes I decided to like were pretty much on the ship with me, but you fucking _killed_ them, Lucretia, when they thought they lost everyone, when we thought we lost you.” He whirls on her, looking for something. An explanation, maybe.

“Two— three months?” Lucretia asks.

“On our world’s Plane of Thought? Yeah. Nerdlord liked it, and that was kind of our mission.”

“You guys were gone for over four years.”

She definitely didn’t convince an entire plane of life’s horrors in three months. It took a while to influence the whole world—momentum was key, apparently.

Taako pauses. Looks up at her. “Kill me, Lucy.”

Lucretia does, with a sickening snap of her fingers.

* * *

There’s a time of silence, then. Not for real, but Lucretia is silent. She answers summons with their beautiful tailor-made house and her and whoever is with her—Magnus, usually, though Merle and Davenport take turns as well—will sit down with her and chat with her and she’ll read, the books that she’s constructed from all their memory.

It’s nice, or she thinks so. They don’t seem to mind it, though there’s certain times that they seem more tired than others. She gets the feeling that when Magnus doesn’t come to parley, he’s not alive to.

Davenport cries when he sees her, once. She asks why, the first words she’s spoken in quite a while. He replies that it’s been two years, and when her head cocks, he tells her that last year, he’d been alone. She bites her tongue, and tastes blood for the first time in a while. They cry together, for a long, long while, and sit in her constructed garden, and he talks to her and tells her all the things that the rest of the crew will never, ever know. All the running he did. All the ways he can’t sleep. All the ways he had to learn to flee and repair the ship.

“I’m a great pilot,” he tells her, and she’s reminded of how, back on their old world, gnomes were never meant to be so serious. She remembers the little tchotchkes of them, long white beards and rosy cheeks. Davenport looks like the most tired thing in all the worlds. He looks alone. “But there were days where I just wanted to stop running and give up. Even though I knew I’d die, and they’d all die. Even then, I wanted to give up.”

“Why didn’t you?” Lucretia asks. “I would have caught you, finally. All of you with all the rest of them and the Judges and all.”

Davenport looks at her, and smiles. “Well, I wasn’t really alone, right? With you chasing me, if I’d died I would have left _you_ alone.”

Lucretia pauses. Opens her mouth, pauses again. “If I’d caught you— you would be part of me now.”

He shakes his head. “No. No. Like this, you’re part of _us.”_

She’s silent a few more years. They’re peaceful.

* * *

“It’s our sixty-ninth year running,” Magnus announces, a few times after that. “You know what that means.”

Lucretia looks up from her book. “No.”

* * *

“Anyways, your sixty-ninth year was four years ago. Remember? You were on that one plane a lot longer than you thought.”

“Let me have this, Creesh.”

“I will construct a dog for you and that can be your present for number sixty-nine. Deal?”

“How long have you been able to make _dogs?”_

“…Not that long.”

“Creesh.”

“Two years, I think?”

_”Creesh.”_

“I was saving it for a special occasion!”

“I can’t believe this!”

“Listen! It’s fine! I can make them now! This one is named Johann!”

She doesn’t get many stories from Magnus that year. Apparently, not too many planes have dogs. He loves Johann.

She brings him back every year after that.

* * *

Lup is there, one cycle. Lucretia recognizes her, but there’s something new. “You’re— wow.”

Lup, red and aflame in soul and spirit, grins viciously. “I’m a lich. Me and Barry, we figured out how to do it. Hot, right?”

“It’s _incredible,_ Lup, holy shit,” Lucretia says, and draws forward to touch her. In a place like this, it’s really just their souls anyways. She can touch a lich, if she’d like. And she wants to touch Lup. “How did you do this? Liches, they’re usually, how? What’s your phylactery, what did you do?”

“It’s who,” Lup replies, and Lucretia had somehow forgot how much she’d missed that sharp, sharp grin. It’s a little different than Taako’s, a little easier, kinder. Though Lucretia can still remember times when Taako’s smile had been kind to her. She’s not sure if they will be again. “Taako and Barry, they’re keeping me together. They gave me the best days ever, and if I feel myself coming apart I just remember that they’ve got me. And it’s way easier when someone holds your heart to come back to it.”

“That’s beautiful. Lup, you’re so beautiful. I’m sure Barry’s beautiful too.”

Lup laughs. “He is. Oh, Lucretia, they all are.”

“I know. I know, I remember. I see you all so often, but all apart. It’s so hard to remember how beautiful you all are, all apart.”

“What do you remember about us, Lucy?”

Lucretia pauses. She doesn’t need to consult with her multitudes, to answer a question like this. “I remember you were amazing. I remember you were my family.”

“We still are.”

Lucretia smiles. “And I’m still yours.”

Lup looks her over. “How about the rest of you?”

Trillions of voices speak. Lucretia doesn’t listen, for once. “They don’t matter right here.”

Lup shakes her head. “They always matter. They mattered even before they were a part of you.”

_**She’s wrong. They never mattered when they were alive. We’re fixing that. We matter more like this. We are more than she says we are.** _

All these voices, Lucretia thinks, are wrong, even as cacophonous as they are. She thinks she mattered to these people even before she transcended planes. She thinks she mattered more when she mattered to her family.

But she’s not hungry, so she no longer matters.

* * *

They go through many cycles. Lucretia knows that the rest of them all count, but she doesn’t, spending her time chasing them and wishing that she had a little more control over the _why._ It’s strange, but sometimes she can just float, lose herself in everyone else she’s connected with, ravenous until she’s summoned out of her hunger. It works rather well.

They all take turns, but Lucretia thinks that it’s primarily Magnus. She’s looking over him with Johann, and cocks her head.

“I wonder if I can give him to you,” she muses. “The next time I catch up to your plane— do you think you could pick him up while I was devouring the plane?”

Magnus looks up at her, from petting Johann’s belly. They’d been silent for a while before this, after he’d filled her in on the stories from this year. She’s gotten to writing them down, storing them in notebooks in this little home she’d constructed for them all. When she finally catches up to them, when they tire and fatigue, she’ll be here waiting to give them her personal brand of heaven. All of them together, in this sunlit space. “Wait, would you do that?”

Lucretia shrugs. Her shoulders span universes, these days. “I could try. You could have him for all the year, instead of just when you’re hanging with me. Would he reset with you?”

“I dunno. Probably? Fisher does.”

“Then I’ll try dropping him off next year. Though you have to promise me you’re gonna keep visiting me even though I don’t provide dog time.”

Magnus laughs and pushes himself up to his knees so he can lean up and kiss her forehead. “I’d never stop visiting you.”

Except.

He does.

* * *

Lucretia stops being able to find them. The Light of Creation always follows their ship, and so Lucretia can always _find them._ But she can’t— she can’t find them.

She can’t find them.

She’s hungry and she can’t find them.

She’s lonely and she can’t find them.

She’s _starving_ and she can’t find them.

She’s miserable and she can’t find them.

She’s _**being pulled apart**_ and she can’t find them.

* * *

Something, uh.

Something bad happens.

* * *

Lucretia is falling apart. It doesn’t always feel like she is, but she knows she is. When she looks at herself, she can see the mother-of-pearl gashes in her flesh from when the teeth of the Hunger tore into it and she had to repair herself. She learned from a cleric, but she certainly can’t heal like one. The bonds between the people in these planes are holding her together like suture string, but she certainly isn’t working well like this. The bonds are getting weaker and weaker as they all starve, and she can’t do it anymore. Or, she’s getting close to not being able to do it anymore. There are eyes on her, now, every day, angry and hungry. She knows that she doesn’t have much time left. She started them on this journey and they will all devour her to end it.

When they feel the Light again, they scream.

They howl.

They take off, ravenous wolves, bears, eagles, hunting the light that was so elusive for so long, and they were so hungry, and they are intent on destruction. Lucretia hunts along with them, swept up in the slavering jaws of the hunger of a hundred worlds.

That is, until they find it.

The world isn’t ready for them. They cut off all the planes, send down their swarm, and start chewing on the gristle of the planes, the divine bonds of the Celestial Plane that connect clerics to their gods. The bonds of grief and memory that connect the Astral Plane to the souls still living. The bonds formed by shared ideas on the Plane of Thought and the Material Plane. They’re all destroyed, consumed, and Lucretia is right there along with them, indulging herself in the _**feast**_ of terror that they can now get at.

She thinks, _it’s not as good as Taako’s chicken._

And she doesn’t know how to do it, not really, but she wants to see him. She wants to see them all, all of them, but— she wants to see Taako.

No. No, no, she doesn’t want to see Taako. She wants to see Merle. She can’t eat any of Taako’s food with her mouth torn open then stitched over and back together with the shining shields of the Hunger. She’d never be able to taste it how it’s meant to be tasted. But Merle can fix all these scars, he knows how to. She’s destroyed his bond to the Celestial Plane, but she’s sure he can do— something.

She was never taught how to parley, not really. But she tries. She focuses on his presence, the presence that has been with her for over a hundred years, and summons Merle Highchurch, the cleric whose shields worked to destroy universes.

It’s an impressive resumé.

He comes in looking startled and ready for battle. She’s sure that she summoned him away from something important, though she can’t think of anything more important than what she needs to do right now.

“Lucy. You’re— you look like shit,” he says.

Lucretia nods, and wishes she could smile wider than the rigid white stitching allows her. “Yeah, I probably do. What happened to your arm, Merle?”

He looks down at it, shrugs. “Had to get it chopped off. We were trying to collect— well, it doesn’t matter. Why’d you call me, Lucy?”

Lucretia gestures down at the chessboard she’d made, the pieces. She isn’t too bad at chess. Merle and Davenport were always better, though. This place is different from her constructed home, harsh by the light of the iridescent shields of the Hunger around them. Merle won’t see it and Lucretia can’t either, but she can _feel_ the many, many eyes on them from the scouts that the Hunger sent to look on this plane, this time. She doesn’t want to give them too much ammunition on her family, so she settles for being cryptic.

Her connection with the Hunger in this space is vague, but she can feel the plane fighting, and she can feel it dying in equal measure. She doesn’t know exactly how to help that, but if one of them, just one of her family knows—perhaps she can save them. Maybe they can run again.

“Take a seat, Merle. Let’s play,” she murmurs, and, joy of joys, he listens.

Their chess game is quick only because Lucretia is trying to get Merle to _understand._ Her king swallows up the pieces he captures and she can’t do anything but hope Merle notices the way the bonds wrap around him, chaining themselves to him and making him stronger, lighter, hungrier. It’s a bad strategy. She tells him of how hungry she’s been, how hungry they’ve all been. She can feel angry eyes on her when she tells him she’s been changed and turned, how she’s not in control anymore. She tries to ignore how he looks scared by that revelation. She tries to ignore how much she loves that she can still scare him.

He captures her king eventually. She summons up the magic she hasn’t really had to use in a hundred years—after her initial shields, the Hunger really did just support itself—and it’s not much magic but it’s so difficult in this parley space, with her nightmares and the eyes and hearts and hunger of millions and billions and trillions weighing on her, she looks directly into Merle’s eyes as her king is destroyed, the bonds broken, and they are _**furious**_ when they rip her backwards, and it was worth it, it really was even as they tear at her, even as she feels what’s left of her torn apart, chewed up and spit out like the worthless figurehead she’s become, even as she feels the embrace, finally, fucking _finally_ again after so so so so so so so so so long she can feel her friend’s—her _family’s—_ arms around her again.

And then she is ripped apart.

* * *

It’s not too bad. She feels the legions of the Hunger invade her body, take on her form and attack her family. She feels nothing about it. She’s too wrapped up in the hunger of billions to really feel anything at first.

But then, they fall.

She sees Merle through the eyes of trillions, and she realizes there are holes in her Hunger, and that the planes are connected again. The bonds flare up star-bright— brighter, because she’s consumed stars—and the engine of the ship that she has been chasing for years and years and decades, a century, and now more, it starts and it gives them what they need. They need their friends and their family. They need the people they’ve met these past few years.

And they need _her._

Magnus is the one who summons her. It doesn’t quite work the way he wants.

* * *

“Did I go unconscious again?”

Lucretia laughs. She’s whole again, her dark skin again unmarred by the horrible blinding white of her shields. “I don’t think so.”

“Then— why are you here? You, uh. You were like, supposed to come out of the engine and start fighting, uh, yourself? I guess? Cuz that— the Hunger, _crazy_ powerful.”

She knows the answer to his question. She’s dying. She can feel that. An overactive bond engine isn’t going to fix her. “I think I might be in too deep,” she tells Magnus, and pats the spot on the sand next to her.

He sits.

The sun is setting. Lucretia thinks it’s beautiful. “I haven’t seen a sunset in over a century,” she tells him. “I ate all those. It’s weird to see it with just one sun.”

“We were on a world like this, once. The Light was close, and it was warm. Our beach year. You would have liked it.”

“I remember you told me about it. You’re right, I would have.”

“It would have been better with you.” A pause. “I was really hoping I could see you, like, for real, with that whole stunt.”

“Why’d you try summoning me in the first place?”

His hand goes to scratch the back of his neck. “I think… All our family is down there. I’m assuming this is like parley so hopefully they’re not there without me. I think I wanted _all_ our family down there, fighting that thing.”

“That thing is me.”

“No, it’s not. That thing is way bigger than you. I mean, sure I guess you started it? But you haven’t finished with it. That thing doesn’t love anymore. You do.”

She chokes on a laugh and it comes out more as a sob. He’s right. He’s so fucking right. “I’m sorry I started it. I just— I knew love and I had it taken away, you know? And it—”

“Wasn’t great.”

“No, not at all.” She laughs, quietly. Only Magnus could make her laugh at a time like this. “I know I’ve told you this. You all were gone _so long._ I know it didn’t feel like that for you guys, but for me, I was expecting to be alone for two months and you guys stayed away for _four years._ I couldn’t deal with it. I wanted to— I surrounded myself with people who were hurting like I was. And if I said it well enough, they found that _all_ of them were hurting like I was. They were also alone, even with others. They were small and insignificant and meaningless and hungry and if we all— if all of us were, you know, _us,_ we wouldn’t have to feel that way anymore. We could just, you know, become bigger than all that. Become bigger than life and never have to suffer in it.”

Magnus just stays silent for a while. The sun is still setting. It’s beautiful, with only one, Lucretia realizes. Two setting at once was always a little hard to look at. Too bright. But this one paints the sky gold and pink, and bathes the world around them in rose. Lucretia wishes she remembered what roses smell like. Lup and Taako shared a perfume that was supposed to smell like it. She wonders if they still smell like that, light and flowery.

“Well,” he pipes up, and Lucretia blinks to look at him. “You weren’t alone, you know that, right?”

“I understood that when we first parleyed. When you all still loved me, even with what I’d become. It was— unthinkable. But you loved me so well, Magnus, you and Merle and everyone, you made sure I still had a family.”

“You always did. We were so overjoyed to see you again, Creesh.”

“So was I, Magnus. Magnus, you know the house? In parley? I made it. I made it for all of you. Magnus, you had a bedroom and a dog, and Merle had stacks of fantasy Kenny Chesney albums and a little garden out back—behind a privacy fence—and, and Taako had a spice rack and I made sure to include _everything,_ and Barry had a lab in the basement. And, Magnus, it was, it was all of ours. We could have been a _family_ there.”

She wishes that fantasy could have been true. It was a good one. They had a dog in that one. In that one, Lucretia wasn’t being unmade by the hunger of many. In that one, they had all been a family, on a ship that was powered by the love that made their hearts beat, the love she’d denied until she and everyone else was swallowed with it.

But there’s no house. There’s not even really a beach, and Magnus needs to get back to where he was, fighting the monstrosity she’d fed for so long. Lucretia is fading as it does, her heart inevitably entwined with the thing she’d fed so long. In a sick way, she loves it. She can’t leave it, even when she finally starts feeling again its vice grip around her soul.

The hungry teeth of trillions sink into her being.

She wraps her arms around his neck. In the parley space, they were never really allowed to touch. She could kill him, but he couldn’t harm her— couldn’t touch her. But in this space, this time, it’s apparently not parley because she can wrap her arms around his neck and get a hug from him once more, and his strong arms wrap around her like they did decades and centuries ago, eons ago, at the beginning of time.

She gets a hug from her brother again.

Lucretia, the reason and destruction of a thousand, a million worlds, disappears.

The sun sets.


End file.
